PRODUCTS

F5® BIG-IP® DNS
F5 Silverline WAF
F5 Silverline DDoS
F5 Advanced Firewall (AFM)

BENEFITS

Applications always available to customers on any device
Seamless cloud migration
Consistent security policies across data center and public cloud
Reduced costs related to security compliance

CHALLENGES

Unautomated, manual processes
Mitigating threats, including distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos)

One of the largest telecommunications providers in Greece experienced rapid growth since its establishment with continuously investments in technology, providing inclusive mobile & fixed telephony, internet and TV solutions to its customers. As the Telco provider continued to scale, the pressure mounted to digitally transform its operations, enhance the availability and resilience of its services and applications, as well as mitigate against cyber threats – all without compromising its excellent customer service reputation.

Business Challenges

As a challenger mobile operator with a strong desire to move at pace, the Telco provider required robust and flexible applications and systems to meet the needs of its expanding customer base, including increasingly personalized services and a more user-friendly digital interface.

By 2018, Telco’s growth called for some important improvements. The transformation plan was put in place to simplify operations, harness the benefits of cloud computing, enhance its security posture and take its customer service capabilities to the next level.

The transformation would entail 360-degree protection, customer-facing applications and distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) mitigation. In addition, Telco provider needed solutions that would enhance the performance of its applications as its business continued to expand, ensuring that customers’ services are always available and reliable.

Ultimately, Telco provider was looking to optimize its digital transformation efforts, including modernizing the ways in which customers interacted with the provider. It also wanted to be able to integrate new services and applications with some of its existing security platforms.

Solution

Telco provider started working with F5, through its sole gold unity partner in the area Pylones Hellas, in 2018. F5 partner Pylones Hellas took care of the physical implementation.

“The decision to work with F5 & Pylones was clear cut,” explained IS Operation & Program Office Director of the Telco provider. “They were the only solution provider with extensive application expertise, as well as the full range of security and cloud solutions that we needed to move the needle for our digital transformation and customer service requirements.”

Pylones & F5, working closely with the systems architecture team of the Telco provider, presented a comprehensive set of solutions to be deployed in three phases, starting in mid-2018.

Telco provider deployed multiple F5® BIG-IP® Application Delivery Controllers with Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (VCMP) to provide a virtual separation of services while maintaining the ability to access hardware acceleration for high SSL throughput.

Importantly, Telco provider opted for a hybrid deployment of F5’s Web Application Firewall (WAF) for on-premises and managed services. With a centralized deployment of WAF policies utilizing Silverline®, F5’s cloud-based, managed services platform, the Telco provider can reduce IT overhead, minimize configuration errors, and ensure the overall effectiveness of each policy to protect web applications – no matter where they reside in the network. In particular, the approach has enabled Telco provider to reduce the cost of security compliance by maintaining consistent security policies across both their data center and public cloud environments. Silverline Web Application Firewall is built on BIG-IP ASM, which is recognized as the most scalable WAF on the market.

In line with regulatory recommendations, Telco provider also incorporated Silverline DDoS Protection. The solution leverages F5’s Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to route all traffic to a scrubbing and protection center that utilizes a GRE tunnel to send clean traffic back to the network. Routed mode configuration does not require any application specific configuration and provides an easy option to turn on or off the Silverline DDoS Protection.

Benefits

Enhanced security & resilience

The F5 solutions implemented by Telco provider to date have significantly enhanced security and resilience, while mitigating against key cybersecurity threats. Applications are always available to its customers on any device and with no compromise on security. Meanwhile, increased automation has helped Telco provider improve backend operation efficiency.

Secure digital transformation

“With the rapid growth we are experiencing, it was vital to work with a partner that had the precise tools we require and the ability to implement them without any disruptions to our ongoing operations. Pylones & F5 achieved all of that and their solutions helped us to attain stellar growth in 2019,” said IS Operation & Program Office Director of the Telco provider.

“Thanks to Pylones, we have been able to digitally transform and offer our customers the type of flexible and secure applications that they expect. We can now continue to grow with confidence, knowing that we have a partner that can not only support us today but also well into the future.”